Cycling the Taff Trail on Tilly Tandem: part 1 to Merthyr Tydfil 2023

We have talked about cycling the Taff Trail for the last 30 years and we finally got our act together, packed the trailer and Tilly into the van and had our son drive us to Cardiff from where we were starting the ride.
Neither of us like cities, far too many people for us. So we were more than happy to leave the Capital behind us and head off through the Parks and lanes.
The one thing I would personally say is that cycle tracks/trails are brilliant for traffic free rides but speed is very much reduced for much of the way. That's one reason I prefer to cycle on roads, we can pretty much keep up with the flow of traffic.
We live in a beautiful country here in Wales, and we cycled from the coast up through the valleys, mostly following the River Taff.
Our nemesis was the steps at Pontygwaith going under and then steeply up the A470. This section was by far one of the hardest for us as Tilly2 weighs in at about 28kgs and our trailer was approximately 30kgs. It also doesn't seem to have featured much in any of the many other videos that we have watched about the Taff Trail. I fully intend on doing a stand alone video of just this section in normal speed, not sped up as in this video.
We began to encounter gates/barriers that were wide at the bottom and narrower at the top. These were very problematic for us as the tandem handlebars were too wide to wheel through. We tried various ways of getting through including unhitching the trailer - though we ended up having to tilt the bike at an extreme angle and inch it through (complete with trailer) - not easy when you consider the weight of the tandem and trailer!!
Our memory card run out as we reached Pony y Cafnau, the old viaduct but we will have footage of the rest of the journey to Brecon as we will be returning to do it from Merthyr very soon.
Watch this space.........